As the Kaiser Canyon fire erupted late last week, Tito Pakootas saw smoke in the distance and prepared for the worst.
“There was no hand crew, no dozer line,” he said, standing outside his home Tuesday, surrounded by scorched earth. “We were stretching every hose we had out here for water.”
Pakootas, 21, revved up his red gas-powered Super Bronco rototiller and made his own fire line around the house, then used a weed whacker to cut down grass farther out. At one point while he worked, fire retardant from an aircraft showered him in pink. As for the tiller, he said: “It ain’t very wide, but it did the job.”
Pakootas and his partner Elizabeth Finley evacuated on short notice Saturday as the fire exploded in size, with the fire destroying their shed that included his tool chest and chainsaw, as well as the coming winter’s wood for their stove. But the couple’s horses and chickens were spared, and they credit their makeshift fire line for saving their home.
The fire came within yards of many doorsteps in Nespelem, a town of about 200 people.
Believed to be ignited last week by lightning, the wildfire has scorched 71,000 acres, or over 110 square miles, according to updates Tuesday from fire officials. It's considered only 1% contained.
About 1,000 people evacuated under Go Now!" orders, many of them to shelters set up in nearby towns: Omak, Grand Coulee, Coulee Dam, Coulee City. As the fire's front fanned away from Nespelem, the order was downgraded to "Get Set."
Now that they’re back home, Pakootas and Finley — along with others on the Colville Indian Reservation — are taking stock of what’s been lost as the Kaiser Canyon fire continues to smolder in Okanogan and Ferry counties.
Fire managers noted Tuesday that it had been hard to do aerial firefighting on Monday, "due to low visibility impacting safe operations." Unmanned aircraft were scheduled to arrive Tuesday to help with detecting hot spots and other needs.
“Fire managers remain committed to a full suppression strategy, with the highest priorities being public and firefighter safety, along with the protection of homes, communities and critical infrastructure,” according to an update from fire officials.
About 500 fire personnel responded to battle the flames, but the ordeal left Pakootas frustrated with the official response.
"They’re paying these guys to come out and fight this fire," he said. "From the actions we saw, us homeowners are fighting harder than the guys getting paid."
In a phone interview, Colville Tribal Council member Cindy Marchand said at least 15 homes have been confirmed as destroyed.
"A lot of people, this includes everything they had, a lot of these homes are multi-generational homes that people have lived in, maybe their grandparents lived in," Marchand said. "So they are definitely losing quite a bit of their history."
Fire officials earlier said at least 24 structures were destroyed, a number that includes barns, woodsheds and other outbuildings where people aren’t necessarily living.
Those other losses hurt, too, Marchand said. Priceless belongings, like beadwork, were ultimately lost.
Marchand said she was thankful for the state and federal firefighters who came in to defend the town as the fire threatened to overwhelm it. And she acknowledged that in some cases, residents did some of that work.
“I am really proud of our local residents and our local people for stepping up and stepping in when we have emergencies like this,” Marchand said.
For anyone wanting to help, the tribe’s official wildfire recovery donation account, known as the Cedar Fund, is available on the tribal website.
Cody Desautel, the tribe's executive director, had two numbers to describe just how bad recent fire seasons have been. Since 2014, a total of 1 million acres have burned on the reservation. The entire reservation is 1.4 million acres.
"That is a really bad statistic to be noted for," he said, adding: "We've gotten used to big wildfires, so I think we respond better to them than most, because it becomes essentially a fire drill every year.
Desautel said crews have been so busy fighting off the fire and putting out hot spots that a full damage estimate is still ahead.
“People are grateful to get to come back home, but I think there's a lot of concern about what they’re going to come back to,” he said, adding: “Coming back to see black all the way around you, your entire community, is always a little traumatic.”
That phenomenon could be seen all along Joe Moses Road in Nespelem, where houses and trailers sat in seas of blackened fields. Pink stripes of fire retardant draped the road and ran into fields. One intact mobile home was almost completely pink from aerial fire retardant. One lot over, what appeared to be the charred wheels and base of a mobile home were also pink. Nearby, a tree bled white smoke into the gray sky.
On Tuesday afternoon, Dan Nanamkin, 58, walked around his property, where a few hot spots still smoked, and surveyed what he lost. Nanamkin returned home Monday night to find his woodshed destroyed, along with five cords of winter wood, some tools and a rack where he’d normally hang meat to dry, along with one of two old Shaker churches he said burned in the fire.
“It must have been a big-ass bonfire,” he said. Nanamkin’s house was saved, however, as was his garden, several tipis, a sweat lodge and educational space that he uses as part of his work with the Young Warrior Society.
Back at the home protected by a rototiller, Finley pointed out the chicken coop that survived.
When the couple got home, “we went to go check on them, and one of them still laid an egg, after all that,” said Finley, 19, adding: “We’re lucky because we just started laying them, it’s only her third egg.”
Said Pakootas: “During hard times, she’ll feed us.”
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